Family friendly flying…
posted Sunday, August 31st, 2008 at 7:01 pm
Flying with a child/ren is like being in on of those Survivor reality shows. I can see the promo now: ‘ A bunch of parents with tired, irritated, and bored children, try to survive two days trapped in a moving metal box – with bad air, fake food, and no playground.’ However, unlike the TV show, your audience is sitting in the ailes nearby judging your child, evaluating your parenting skills, and wishing they could vote your family or themselves OFF. Having just completed a looong haul flight with our 5 year of daughter Possum from Australia to the US, I realise that it would be a great pre-test for anyone contemplating parenthood. Actually it wasn’t really that bad, until Possum got an ear ache in the third leg of our journey.
But even before the journey begins the tension builds. ‘How many more sleeps til ‘Merica?’. Next, ‘Is going to be like one of those fun rides at …..world?.’ Then comes the excruciating disappointment when your child discovers after about 10 minutes, it’s not much fun at all, and goes for the challenge in breaking the world record for saying ‘are we there yet?’ Only 31 hours and 50 more minutes, and 3 plane changes to go.
As I looked around at other parents, I realised we had more suitcases than everyone else, and mostly under our eyes. The children, bright-eyed, flush-cheeked, and rat-nest haired too, are in a state of hyper-exhaustion. Then I thought that this plane trip is like a little micro-cosm of life…children and parents are tolerated, kind of pitied but not given any really useful support. Children are given tacky token pseudo product/gifts to distract them from their distress … Now if we could design a really ‘family friendly’ flight experience how would it look? What what do you think?
But we’re here, we made it. It was all worth it, because we are visiting treasured family and friends… and we are being looked after so well. We’re OFF the island!
A really family friendly flight cabin would be much more compartmented, like train cars, maybe. The problem with being in public for long periods of time with your kids is that when they get bored/tired/hungry/overstimulated, they’ll do something just to get a reaction out of you and then if you don’t react, you worry that you look lax or that, while toughing out bad behaviour is a good parental decision for you, it’s not fair to make everyone else around you suffer through the toughing out too. And then, god help you if, instead of not reacting, you react with more vehemence than is generally accepted in public. There is also that most kids, when they’re bored or overstimulated, just need privacy.
There’s a lot you could do to signal that the environment is family friendly and that parents are supported and accepted, like making toys, movies or nap spaces available. But really, I don’t know if there’s any substitute for just having your own space to parent in your own way and let the kids be themselves without feeling like there is a spotlight being shone on your family dynamics.
Megan said this on September 2nd, 2008 at 2:52 pm